As a teenager and young adult, I was strictly a Marvel reader. I don't think there was anything of judgment in the decision, just that Marvel comics were the ones I happened to read. There was one exception: The Legion of Superheroes.
Now, if you were going to read just one DC book, the Legion was the one to go with. Since it happened in the future, crossovers with or guest appearances by other DC characters were usually limited to Superboy (who, not being Superman, was not himself a part of the usual DC continuity). You didn't have to read anything else in order to enjoy the Legion. They stood alone in their own world.
I read the Legion on occasion when I was very young--whenever mom and dad brought home a copy of Adventure or Superboy. I don't have those books anymore, but I do remember a couple of storylines distinctly. One was an imaginary story in which Saturn Girl/Lightning Lad and Phantom Girl/Ultra Boy married and left the Legion; I remember Brainiac Five objecting, and Saturn Girl chiding him because his cold, computer mind couldn't understand what love was (I think this stuck in my mind because it seemed such a mean thing to say). I don't recall how that issue ended because I only had part of the comic, the last pages had disappeared. (Research tells me that this was probably October 1965, a story in Adventure called "The Weddings That Wrecked the Legion." I would have been three then, which explains why I didn't take very good care of my comics--although I did keep the shredded book for years to come.)
The other Silver Age story I remember had to do with Dream Girl going undercover disguised as one of a gang of villains (this was pretty easy back then as all comic book girls looked alike apart from hair style and color); I believe her name was Mystelor and she was a telepath, a power Dream Girl approximated by means of precognition, somehow. (Why they didn't send Saturn Girl, I have no idea.) In this case I don't know how the story began, as the first pages were torn from this book, but I was pretty impressed with DG's quick thinking.
On the whole, though, I didn't develop an intense attachment to the Legion until the late 70s and early 80s. That's the era I have a particular fondness for, although I do like the earlier and later books as well. Actually, I read the Legion fairly faithfully right up until the early to mid-90s, when they had two Legion books because they had two Legion teams--one the older group we'd been reading for years, the other a younger set still in their teens, and apparently one set were clones. (If you don't know, don't ask.) So of course when I started in on the comics again a few years back, the Legion was on my list. But the things I like most about the Legion?
People. The Legion was not only a group book, it was a large group book. They typically had 20+ members (not counting reservists or the Substitute Legion), which you'd expect to make for a cumbersome storyline, but somehow that never happened. There were times when one character or group of characters received more attention than others, but on the whole everyone got enough attention to hold the readers interest and allow for a bit of characterization.
The large membership meant that there was no end to the ways different members could interact with each other--it seemed real, the way that some Legionnaires were friends while others were really merely colleagues. With a community that large, there was room to grow. Not everyone had to get along on a personal level, as long as they could work together on a professional level.
Women. With such a large membership, there were plenty of female members, enough so that there were a variety of roles available to them (not just "the emotional one" or "the rescuee"). And in the late 70s/early 80s, the Legion's women were some of the best-written and most interesting in superhero comics.
Now, I loved Saturn Girl, right from the start--even back in the 60s, she was never anything but competent and self-controlled, and got a good deal less of the "just a girl" thing than the other female members. She was a founding member, and always one of the strongest personalities in the group.
Shrinking Violet became another favorite after that convoluted storyline in which she was kidnapped and held prisoner for months. (Basic details of that mess: Imskian terrorists fooled a Durlan actress into taking Violet's place in the Legion, telling her that Violet knew all about the subterfuge. The Durlan developed a relationship with Colossal Boy, who had long had an unrequited love for Violet. Violet's boyfriend, Duplicate Boy, was pretty upset about this until he realized--knowing Violet as well as he did--that it wasn't Violet, a close call for the Durlan. Eventually someone figured out that something was up, and Violet was freed.) Her first act after returning and recovering? To deck her erstwhile boyfriend for not telling anyone that Violet wasn't Violet. (In all fairness to Duplicate Boy, he had never been portrayed as anything other than an idiot.)
Now, usually when a comic book character undergoes some trauma, it doesn't seem to affect them much--the Bargain Hunter puts Lizard Girl on the rack in issue #345? By issue #346 she's back to her usual wisecracking self. Not only was Violet affected by what happened to her, she underwent a substantial change. "Shrinking" was the last word you'd use to describe the new Vi. She didn't return to her former, gentle personality. She didn't forgive the Durlan (who had by then gotten married to Colossal Boy) for what she'd done. She didn't put up with any crap from anyone!
Finally (although I could go on), I really liked the characterization of Dream Girl in this era--bright, competent, confident, and vain and in many ways shallow. I imagine that her power is a difficult one to work well with, and she certainly wasn't portrayed consistently over time, but on the whole she always seemed to be one of the softer, less ambitious members of the Legion. At this point in the series, we started to see her shine, and although I don't think I found her particularly likable, I was always pleased when she was featured in a story because I knew it would be a good one.
The "Adult Legion." The Legion aged over time. Although they certainly didn't age in anything like real time, by 1980 or so most of the members were twenty-somethings. They married. They had children. (Well, a few of them did.) Their relationships were as complex and adult as one could find in comics. Since I, too, was out of my teen years by then, this was something I liked.
Social commentary lite. I'm thinking specifically here of Shrinking Violet and Light Lass, who became a couple and seemed no more dysfunctional than any other comic-book couple. I'm thinking less of Element Lad and Shvaughn/Sean Erin, because I found that whole thing a bit confusing (and I'm pretty sure my transgender friends would find some of it rather insulting), but I think they meant well. And you didn't see a lot of that, back then.
So. Why is the (d) up there in the subject line? It's not because I don't like the current book, because I think it's been pretty good overall. It's because, for me, it's not the same book in a fairly basic sense.
For example, I was out of comics for over ten years. When I took them up again, I started with the same books I'd enjoyed the most earlier. I bought, for example, Iron Man. Iron Man was doing different things in the early 00s than he had been in the early 90s, but he was still Tony Stark, he still had essentially the same history, and he still had essentially the same personality. Tony still acts like Tony. (I'm told that if I'd tuned in back in the late 90s that wouldn't have been the case--if so I'm glad my hiatus occurred when it did. I'm also finding a lot of weird characterization going on right now, what with the Civil War storyline, but I still have faith that he and Reed and Carol have all been infested with evil earwigs and will eventually turn back into their real selves.)
But back to the Legion. Brainiac Five--still an interesting character, but not the same Brainiac Five I read for I don't know how many years. Histories have been rewritten (not just tweaked or retconned, but changed), personalities have been changed (not developed, changed). I wouldn't say they're better or worse than the original, but they are different enough that in many (not all, but many) cases, the characters are unrecognizable. The link to the past has been broken--and although I love comics for what they are as well as what they were, there's something about the new Legion that just doesn't hold this reader's loyalty in the way that the old Legion books did. The nostalgia factor is gone, and that puts the book lower on the "keep this at all costs!" list than it used to be.
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